Goodnight Geraldine

Another from the 2017 folder. One of the many I wrote on my grandmother's passing. Revisions done were just the addition of the last four lines.

Photo by Zoltan Tasi on Unsplash

The chorus hymn sung 
in church that harmonize
with the bronze piano
at her funeral
reminds me of the way  
my grandmother teased out ‘hi’  
over dozens of I's over the telephone  
when she called just to check 
on how I was doing.  

The fluttering mosquito wings,  
creating jaded after images, 
reminds me of the shaking figure  
of my grandmother when she clung  
onto my arm as we walked  
from her white pastel car 
to the front doors 
of a Golden Coral.  

The black cat that dashes  
across the highway at rush hour  
reminds me of my grandmother  
leaving everything to God 
after a doctor discovered a tumor  
on her pancreas that wasn’t benign.  

The black and brown on the banana  
left on a kitchen counter for a week 
remind me of her body—
extinguished and a stranger—
frozen by formaldehyde, 
resting in a casket  
that’s the same pearlescent as her car  
under the Autumn sun when we went out  
to eat at Golden Coral

for the last time—
a send off,
masked in the veneers
of just any other day.

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